Official: Debris in photo belongs to Boeing 777

Investigators checking whether it’s Flight 370 part.

Air safety investigators have a “high degree of confidence” that a photo of aircraft debris found in the Indian Ocean is of a wing component unique to the Boeing 777, the same model as the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared last year,

WASHINGTON — Air safety investigators have a “high degree of confidence” that a photo of aircraft debris found in the Indian Ocean is of a wing component unique to the Boeing 777, the same model as the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared last year, according to a U.S. official said Wednesday.

Air safety investigators — one of them a Boeing investigator — have identified the component as a “flaperon” from the trailing edge of a 777 wing, the U.S. official said.

A French official close to an investigation of the debris confirmed Wednesday that French law enforcement is on site to examine a piece of airplane wing found on the French island of Reunion, in the western Indian Ocean.

The U.S. and French officials spoke on condition that they not be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters he has sent a team to verify the identity of the plane wreckage.

If the debris turns out to be from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, it will be the first major break in the effort to discover what happened to the plane after it vanished on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while traveling from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing. A massive multinational search effort of the South Indian Ocean, the China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand came up dry.

Noting that investigators should be able to tell quickly whether the object came from a 777, Richard L. Aboulafia, an analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va., said that “if that happens, there is only one possibility.”

Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer specializing in ocean currents who did extensive computer simulations last year of where Flight 370 wreck- age might float, said it was possible that some pieces might now be reaching Reunion, more than 3,000 miles from the plane’s last known location.

But the plane would have had to enter the water off northwestern Australia, he said. A series of separate analyses have all pointed to its coming down off southwestern Australia, and that is where investigators from Australia, Malaysia and China have concentrated their search efforts.

Currents in the Indian Ocean move fairly quickly near the Equator, van Sebille said, but those to the south move more slowly. Debris entering the ocean in the primary search area would be much less likely to have drifted as far as Reunion.

“The drift models we have are that it is possible, not probable, that debris would wash ashore at Reunion,” said Australian transport safety chief Martin Dolan,

ANDY WONG/AP A relative of passenger on board the missing plane expresses frustration with the slow pace of the search last March. The plane was last seen March 8, 2014,